Implication Of Fishers’ Livelihoods On Poverty Reduction Along Lake Victoria Basin: A Case Of Mbita Sub- County, Kenya

Abstract

Small scale fisheries play an important across the world in their contribution to food security, nutrition, sustainable livelihoods and poverty alleviation. While, it’s widely accepted that these contributions are central to sustainable development, there hasn’t been proportionate investment in the sub sector to realise these outcomes. In Kenya, populations living along the lake, are among the poorest in the country. This is because of the climate variability and water hyacinth weed that has choked fishing areas that have pushed many fishers into poverty while others have had their incomes dwindle in the recent years. Livelihood diversification is recognized as a one of the coping strategies used by households across the world when faced with such challenging situations. The main objective of the study was to understand the livelihood diversification choices of small scale fishers in Mbita Sub- County and the implication of the choices on their progress out of poverty. The study adopted mixed methods involving the use of both qualitative and quantitative techniques. Multi stage sampling technique was used to select a total of 240 respondents from the four beaches of Mbita Sub- County. Quantitative data collected included the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI) tool kit, a tool commonly used for poverty assessment. The PPI index, is based on international and national poverty line benchmarks that objectively estimates the likelihood of an individual falling below or above the poverty line categories. The results of this study showed that fishers in Mbita Sub- County, made livelihood diversification choices including casual labour, mining, informal and formal employment and farming even though each category of fishers were motivated differently. Furthermore, fishers who earned <$1.25 a day tended to diversify their labour to earn extra income to cushion them of the risk of no income at all. This was also observed to serve as a safety net for possible seasonal shocks such as low season occasioned by water hyacinth menace. In contrast, Fishers who earned >$2.6 a day were more motivated by desire to accumulate more wealth for the future of their children rather than to cushion them from seasonal shocks. The study found a strong positive correlation r=0.305, 0.01 between the highest level of education attained and progress out of poverty. This suggests that interventions that increased the level of education of household head had a higher likelihood of helping households move out of poverty. The respondents’ perceived causes of poverty were climatic variability, lack of support by local authorities, market access, exploitation and anti-social behaviours leading to high infections of HIV/AIDS, drug usage and bad debtors. The ways to improve the lives were diversification livelihood activities, improve access to assets to improve production, improve access to financial institutions, strengthen society organization, build human capacity through educating them and skills and the introduction of aquaculture.